I ENJOY BEING HEALTHY. But I'm not a health freak. I like the odd takeaway; I get through a bottle of red more nights than is wise. Yet I'm in good shape for a thirtysomething - and hardly ever get sick or feel bored. How? With a few simple rules that add fun and zest to life. (See also the one percent principle.)

AT HOME
- Drive a wedge between your home and work lives. Set aside separate spaces for your work papers and home stuff; set definite start and end times to the working day; don't mix business with pleasure. Keep them separate and it's easy to see when they get out of balance.
- Learn to throw things away. Reduce clutter and free up space as a natural part of weekly cleaning. Do you really need those 200 jewel boxes when the CDs would fit into a book-sized binder? Got books you'll never read again? Give them away. Cull your wardrobe every quarter. Get rid of furniture.
- Keep decoration to a minimum. There is an infinity of wonder in plain white walls. Nobody needs wallpaper.
- Decide which possessions you truly value. (For me: it used to be a mountain bike and a favourite leather jacket, but now it's just the encrypted volumes that contain my life's work.) And treat everything else as transient. Don't let your possessions own you.
- Learn to enjoy cleaning. Today's cleaning products are so great there's no excuse for dirt. Put a single hour in your diary every weekend and pace yourself to a favourite CD. Girls HATE dirty apartments, guys.
- Develop self-discipline. If you live alone, don't let yourself go. Even if you're not seeing anyone all day, get up, take a shower, get dressed. Don't slob around. You're still a slob even if nobody sees you being one.

AT WORK
- Very few jobs really demand more than 8 hours a day. Divide your day into two units of four hours and work them. (I do 8am-12noon and 2pm-6pm, taking a nice two hours for the gym in the middle.) Then stop. (Of course, this involves setting goals for the day. See below.)
- Make lists. Of everything. Once it's written down and in Outlook, you can safely forget about it until the time's right and you'll never feel overloaded. When you pace every hour of your life, you also feel a sense of achievement many times a day as you cross items off the list.
- Develop the skill of breaking down big problems into a list of small tasks. Many people act paralysed when faced with a major challenge, but you can get through it with ease if you look for the component tasks within it.
- Do stuff. In other words, make a start on things; don't delude yourself into thinking planning and dreaming about it are 'the work'. If you've got 200 phone calls to make, your first task is to make one call. If you're £100,000 in debt, your first task is to reduce it by one pound. Nothing gets done until you've started on it.
- Embark on every task with the goal of finishing it. Don't end a day feeling you've 'made a start'; the feeling that you've finished something is far better. Aim to complete one task you've set yourself for the day, however small.
- Set specific start and finish times to each task. Don't think you've got 50 cards to write; think you've got 50 cards to write in the next 5 hours. Use a stopwatch if necessary. In time you'll develop the ability to accurately predict how long it'll take you to do anything.
- Look for the carrot, not the stick. Instead of penalties, offer contractors a bonus for hitting deadlines. Not only is it fun, but given the poor time management of contractors you'll save a lot of money too!
- Never email while angry. Never email while drunk.
- Don't be a slave to political correctness, even if people around you are. There is no human right to go through life without being offended.
- Never be afraid to ask stupid questions. If you don't understand something and start work on it anyway, you'll look a lot more stupid later.
- Don't be thinskinned. Be tolerant of other people's views and don't get easily offended. If you're the office's thinnest-skinned person, other people will quickly stop bothering with you.

FOOD
- First off: learn about it. Know where what you're eating comes from. Pick vegetables in the wild, buy direct from farmers, visit a battery farm or a sausage factory if you want to give those things up. Learn how to cook a joint, how to gut a fish. Recover the skills that let our ancestors become more than apes. You'll find it satisfies many primal urges modern society frowns on.
- Prepare food yourself. Nothing like home cooking, and it's easy to turn kitchen time into entertainment with bladed weapons. Buy the best knives (Globals work for me), don't buy anything ready-chopped or precooked. Have a hand in everything you eat.
- Buy fresh and organic, direct from the farmers wherever possible. Enjoy that slab of chocolate, but make it Belgian. Spend a minimum £8 on a bottle of wine. Buy the fresh mozzarella, the organic beef, the free-range eggs. Non-supermarket produce really is different.
- If you really want to lose weight, there's only one thing for it: no supermarket Ready Meals. At all. Ever. Just buy unadulterated meat, fish and veg, cooked by you. Of course, this isn't always practical, so do the next best thing: when you buy packaged food, buy the simplest dishes. The more ingredients go into a ready meal, the more they've been screwed around with.
- Avoid homogeneity and sterility. Don't peel veg to within an inch of their lives; don't make every serving look the same. Celebrate the differences.
- Think Mediterranean. All those pulses, legumes, and fish make up about as healthy a diet as you can get - and it's one of the world's most delicious, too.
- Use olive oil instead of butter. About as healthy as fat gets - and you don't need much of it. There are thousands of varieties, too.
- Buy the BIG bottle of Tabasco. A truly great condiment.
- Grind those herbs! Buy different herbs, peppers, and spices in mills. (I have at least a dozen in my kitchen.) And use them - everywhere.
- Learn to love salads. There are billions of ways to make green leaves interesting. Find a dozen you like and make one every day.
- Make your own salad dressing. Two parts olive oil to one part vinegar, blend with a fork and you're done. Add salt, pepper, mustard, or herbs for endless variety - at a hundredth the cost of supermarket gloop.
- Steam your veg. My steamer - a simple metal flower that sits in a pan - cost all of £5. Steaming cooks your vegetables in a way that doesn't let vitamins leach out. And they taste far better, too.
- Get a juicer. Fruit juices, smoothies, icy summer drinks... you can do anything with them. And the vitamins hit your system in their purest, rawest state. (But if you're tempted to try veg juices, one word: carrots. Veg juices taste soapy without them.)

HEALTH & EXERCISE
- Stay in shape. It's easier to maintain the body you had at 20 if you do a little every day, rather than let yourself go for a decade and rediscover exercise in your 30s. I've had the same waist measurement since I was 19.
- Know your body. Three networks work together to keep you healthy: the circulatory system, the lymphatic system, and the nervous system. As long as they're all flowing smoothly you'll stay healthy, since they feed all your organs from heart to brain. Those assorted clumps of proteins are the end product of three million years of trial and error; know how to make them work best.
- Walk everywhere. Two kilometres covers a lot of city - yet takes less than half an hour. My rule: if it's less than three tube stops away, I walk. The feeling of always being part of a city's ebb and flow is exhilarating.
- Swim every day. Swimming is a true all-round workout. Within weeks you'll feel muscles developing in places you never knew existed, such as SE8.
- Invest in a backpack instead of a briefcase or sports bag. That maxed-out laptop may weigh too many kg, but the pain goes away when it's on your back. You've got your hands free, and you're getting some weight training in at the same time.
- Love fresh air. Keep windows open, even in winter. Add a sweater or turn on the heating if you like - but don't close those windows. Air needs to circulate.
- Maintain your symmetry. Lie flat and breathe; you'll feel where your body is 'unbalanced' before long, such as if you've developed a nervous tic or a foot-clenching habit. Even things up. Your left side should feel the same as your right. (Don't take this to extremes if you're an amputee, though.)

YOUR APPEARANCE
- Use moisturiser. Simple mineral water sprays from Evian or Avene are amazingly effective on dry skin. Make it a twice-daily ritual.
- Don't fetishize cosmetics. Find a few brands that work and stay with them. E45 stuff - plain, functional, no nonsense - has dominated my bathroom for years.
- Add drama to washtime. Shave with a cutthroat razor. Trim your nails with kitchen-size scissors. Tinting the day with risk makes it all something to look forward to.
- Wear the best and the classic. A top-quality leather jacket, silk T shirts, a Porsche watch will outlast cheaper competitors by decades. While Levi 501s and Oxford shoes will never go out of style.

FINANCES
- Know what's in your bank. Always keep the approximate amount in every account in your head. Never be unsure as to whether you can afford things or not. This gives you greater confidence.
- Work out your 'life balance'. Everything you have coming in, minus everything you owe, over the next three months. Keep the total positive, and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you'll be OK for another quarter.

WHEN IN TOWN
- Always help girls with huge suitcases. Always smile at young children. Your friendliness will stay with them all day and give mothers an easier time.
- Be good to shop assistants. They don't get paid much, don't get much respect, and work long hours. Chat to the cleaner if he's not busy, exchange a joke with the barista, treat the waitress as you would your dinner partner (short of asking her back to see your etchings.)
- Give gratuitous compliments. If you like someone's coat/hair/girlfriend, say so without expecting anything from them in return. They'll feel good, and remember you.
- Treat arguments as conversational opportunities. If the guy in the queue is complaining about something the shop can't control, tell him his tolerance of it will be character-building. (But always smile when you say it.)
- If you're really, really in trouble, act first. Strength means little; it's your resolve that matters. Gang leader pulls a knife? Step inside it and whack him, hard. No gang ever survives its leader's nose hitting the tarmac.
- When you move to a new city, visit one interesting place or building a week. Take public transport there, walk around the area before your visit. In this way, you'll develop an excellent feel for your city in less than a year.
- Take part in street theatre. In cities like London, there's always some human drama going on. Don't just look the other way when you see an evangelist with a mike, a throwback punk, a gang of steaming kids on the lookout for unprotected mobile phones, or a nutter on the Tube. Insert yourself into the dialogue, with witty comments and actions as you walk past; make an ironic comment on the scene instead of merely letting it happen around you. It's the same sense of exhilation you get from walking into a room of over-serious art critics, baring your ass and yelling 'WANKERS!!!', but even funnier.
- Veer from the known. Don't go to the generic coffee chain: look four doors to either side and you'll see a small local coffee shop where the sandwiches are homemade - and probably a lot cheaper. Support that non-mainstream economy instead. Starbuck's doesn't need your help; Mr Popidopoulus does.

PEOPLE
- Simplify your network. Haven't seen someone for years? Stop sending them Christmas cards. Tolerating schoolfriends just because they grew up next door to you? Prune your address book ruthlessly.
- As a corollary, choose your contacts with care. Sixteen people, well chosen, can connect you to almost anyone else in the world whenever needed. Find your 16.
- Be dismissive. If someone offends you, let it wither instead of keeping it alive with self-righteous indignation. Still smarting over that insult someone hurled at you last year? Don't make it an issue; just forget about it. They already have.
- Don't pay less than your fair share. Don't avoid buying your round. These things always mark someone out as selfish and greedy - and the assumption's usually right.
- Honesty really is everything. Never ask anyone to lie for you. Never lie yourself. If you've done something bad, let it out straight away and get the bad blood over with.
- Don't see good in bad people. If someone hurts you, hit back as viciously and violently as you can - assuming it wasn't an accident. Violent people only stop being violent when they meet their match.

MIND
- Live overseas for a couple of years. Travel broadens the mind and gives you a sense of wonder. Nobody is too young, nobody is too old, but many people are too stupid and lazy to ever try it.
- Put in the numbers. Give yourself a target. Don't say to yourself you want new customers; say you want four new customers in the next six weeks. Don't say you'll cut down on takeaways; say you'll limit yourself to two a month. Give yourself a means to measure your success.
- Keep the Animal close to the surface, but never lose control over it. The Animal is what we are minus civilisation: the basic evolutionarily successful strategies of lust, hunger, fight and flight; everything that's ancient and powerful in our genome. Know the Animal is there, and you'll be able, when the occasion really demands, to make use of it.
- Once a month, do something that incurs hardship for 24 hours. Live without electricity; switch off the water; imagine the Tube's not running. (No problem there given the state of London's transport network!) It'll remind you how lucky you are to have these things on tap - and make you better prepared for a real outage.
- Find the fascination in things. Know where your street's name comes from; track the course of a extinct river like London's Westbourne. (Clue: if you ever wondered what that huge black pipe is over Sloane Sq's platforms...)
- See the wonder in the seasons. Find something to look forward to each quarter: the colours of autumn, the setting sun on summer evenings... it's fine to have a favourite, but also find something to like in the the other three quarters of the year.
- Concentrate on the greats. Listen to Mozart and Beethoven. Know your Greeks, learn about the Romans, read Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. They make everything else more meaningful, since so much of art and lit is derived from them.
- See stories in everything. Imagine yourself a character in someone else's movie. Think about how you're affecting other people's lives, even if it's just the baby you waved at on the train.
- Calculate things. Measure your stride, know how long it takes to get to the airport, time your lunch trip. Soon you'll develop a strong intuition for what you need to do to get things done.
- Live by the clock. Schedule finish times for things as well as start times, and make sure your day ends before you're sleepy, so you've got time to add variety to the day.
- Determine the structure of things. Why is that building that shape? Why are those bolts so thick? Canary Wharf tube station is a great example of a thing's structure being evident from its form.
- Write things down. Ever had an idea that'd make a great story? An idea for an art installation? Note them all down. Maybe some day, you'll have time do it.